A transcription excerpt from ABC-TV's This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts September 16, 2001

Cokie Roberts:

Well now for some more analysis, we turn to ABC's John McWethy
at the Pentagon: Uh, the Secretary (Rumsfeld) of course did not
give us details about what the military is planning, but he threw
out the possibility of the use of ground troops. What are you
hearing?

John McWethy:

Cokie, I am hearing that they are
prepared to pull out all the stops. You heard the Secretary doing
a number of important things: he's communicating to the American
public; he's communicating to the news media. But this is going
to be a different kind of fight. The nation must prepare themselves
for a different reality. One of those realities is probably going
to be casualties among American forces. The American public has
had in the past few years little tolerance for casualties. He
is saying we're going to have to probably put some kinds of troops
on the ground in other countries, to go after people who are
believed to be responsible for these attacks.

And the American people must understand that
there are risks in that kind of operation. In the past the United
States have not been willing to risk those casualties, and that
is the reason that we have not sent troops in, uh, Afghanistan,
for example, when it was believed that Osama bin Laden was responsible
for other terrorist attacks. He's talking about fifty to sixty
other countries, in which the U.S. believes there are terrorist
cells, including the United States, I might add. All of those
countries are being put on notice, by the U.S., uh, that the
U.S. needs a different level of cooperation.

There is going to be an "Us" verses
"Them" kind of situation for the United States. Uh,
a lot of this is going to be law enforcement and diplomacy, but
there is definitely going to be military action. There are going
to be bombs dropping, uh, and there are probably going to be
troops on the ground, Cokie.